Last week, my wife and I took a drive to West Ocean City to do a interview with Stephanie Becker, owner of Steffi’s Place, the Eastern Shore’s first and only kosher bed and breakfast.
When we turned the car onto Elm Street, gorgeous B&B’s location, we saw a young frum man mowing his lawn at a house. A little up the road, we saw what looked like a replica of 770, the Crown Heights, N.Y. international headquarters of Lubavitch.
In the backyard of Steffi’s Place is an eruv. The living room area is well supplied with holy books, and glatt kosher food is served in the spacious dining room.
I write all this with amazement only because it was in 1975, my first job out of college, was as sports editor of an Ocean City-based newspaper, “The Eastern Shore Times.”
After Labor Day, I sometimes felt I was the only Jew in town, knowing, though that a small Jewish presence was growing in nearby Ocean Pines, and that there was a shul in Salisbury.
But still, back in the 70s and in the immediate preceding decades, Baltimore’s Jews headed off for Atlantic City, N.J. Many of us over 50 have memories of the Breakers Hotel, Nathan’s, and endless summer Boardwalk walks where we’d see many of our neighbors.
That summer get-away has been replaced by Ocean City, Bethany Beach and Rehoboth Beach. To see these outward signs of observant Judaism on the lower Eastern Shore is wonderful. Our children don’t know of a time when Jews didn’t frequent Ocean City.
I can remember doing interviews with poor blacks, who lived in Worcester County outside of Ocean City and Berlin, literally in tar shacks. I can remember the “n” word used in conversation among whites in town. Every time I’d hear it, I’d cringe and ask that it not be used. I can also remember at least one establishment in 1875 with separate entrances for whites and blacks.
I did run into anti-Semitic comments every once in a while. One enlightened fishing tackle shop owner told me that he used a particular fishing tool “to circumcise certain people.” Sure, he didn’t mean anything by it. Mmmmm.
Now I’m told that the rebbetzin of the Ocean City Chabad prepares dozens of kosher lunches for the number of Israeli students who work at T-shirt shops on the Boardwalk. It’s not uncommon to hear Hebrew and Russian spoken in these shops or to see a mezuzah on a door.
So by and large, I am so pleased to see that diversity, and the real world have come “downy oshun.”
Because I like others do remember when the Eastern Shore was known more for its taffy than its tolerance.
Glad that’s changing.